Google Acquires Ad Tech Company Invite Media

Google on Thursday formally announced its acquisition of Invite Media, a company that developed a system for real-time bidding on display ad space.

Google on Thursday formally announced its acquisition of Invite Media, a company that developed a system for real-time bidding on display ad space.

Google said it has been investing significantly in its display ad business, and as a result, publishers are getting improved returns while advertisers and agencies are running more effective campaigns. Invite Media will add to that equation, Google said.

"Real-time bidding technology is an important part of this ecosystem," Neal Mohan, vice president of product management at Google, wrote in a blog post. "It enables advertisers and agencies to tailor their bids on an impression-by-impression basis, based on their own data, when bidding on Web sites that choose to make their ad space available through an advertising exchange."

As an example, Mohan pointed to a retailer who agrees to run a display ad campaign for a shoe sale at $5 per 1,000 impressions. That retailer, however, can specify that they will pay $10 per 1,000 impressions for ads that include running shoes if they know that a browser has previously visited the athletics section of its Web site.

"Details of the ad impression are passed to the retailer's bidding platform in real time by the exchange, and the auction takes into account the retailer's increased bid," Mohan wrote.

Among the exchanges that enable real-time buying is DoubleClick, which Google purchased in 2007 for $3.1 billion.

"We're going to continue to invest significantly in improving Invite Media's technology and products as a separate platform and, in time, make it work seamlessly with our DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) ad serving product," Mohan wrote. "Integrating Invite Media's technology will help DFA's clients to easily buy ad space across multiple ad exchanges, as part of managing their broader display ad campaigns."

Invite Media's platform will continue to be available to any agency or advertiser, whether they use DFA or not, he said. The Invite Media purchase also "changes nothing" about the operation of DoubleClick.

In other advertising news, MySpace announced Thursday that it has signed a deal with ad platform Ad.ly to let content creators put their ads in the MySpace news stream. This includes celebrities, filmmakers, musicians, and social influencers, MySpace said.

"By integrating Ad.ly's platform, MySpace will be able to bring together key influencers with key marketers to broadcast targeted messages to their friends," MySpace said.

To participate, MySpace publishers can visit myspace.com/adly to sign up and create a profile.

Chloe Albanesius has been with PCMag.com since April 2007, most recently as Executive Editor for News and Features. Prior to that, she worked for a year covering financial IT on Wall Street for Incisive Media. From 2002 to 2005, Chloe covered technology policy for The National Journal's Technology Daily in Washington, DC. She has held internships at NBC's Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American University...
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